Waiting Together

Luke 1: 26-44

December 21, 2014

Advent 4

When we think of interruptions,

they usually aren’t good.

It’s usually a negative word.

Our sleep was interrupted,

The class was interrupted

An outburst interrupted the courtroom.

Our life was interrupted.

We were just going along and then we were interrupted.

But not all interruptions are bad.

As a pastor, people often tell me,
“I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

It’s usually from someone with some a theological question,

which is what I actually went to school for.

Not for what you interrupted me from,

which is usually copying things, making signs, and scheduling meetings.

So to be clear, the interruptions are usually

more fun than what I’m supposed to be doing.

But I digress.

Interruptions can be inconvenient,

But they’re not all bad.

Take this story today for instance,

Mary is doing whatever she’s doing that day,

making bread or sewing or washing something.

Doing whatever she was doing with her life.

Preparing for her marriage,

thinking her future would be very similar to her mother’s life,

and the life of most other women.

And just then Gabriel comes to her

Mary and Elizabeth
Julie-Ann Bowden

and tells her that she would bear God’s child.

The savior, the Messiah, the one that everyone was waiting for.

That is quite an interruption.

And Elizabeth, Mary’s relative, got a similar interruption

Well, her husband Zachariah did first, and he was skeptical,

so Gabriel rendered him mute.

Gabriel maybe learned from this experience

that you might need to get buy-in from the woman

who is going to carry the child before you talk to the man.

But I digress again.

But eventually, Elizabeth’s life gets interrupted by the fact

that she is going to have a child too.

Except she and her husband were very old and were not really

expecting to raise a child at this point in their lives.

Imagine standing there, brushing your teeth,

in whatever  state of life you are in right now

and having an angel of God come and tell

you that you were going to be a parent to the Messiah,

right now, if that was okay with you.

That would be a pretty big interruption in your life, right?

One might think that the best response would be to refuse,

to run away, to go into hiding.

Or you might just decide to go along with

whatever God has in mind.

And if you did that, you might join together with other people

who have gotten the same kind of interruption

which is what Mary does.

After Mary hears the news, she goes out to see

her sister Elizabeth, the one other person

who truly understands  this gigantic interruption.

And talks with her, celebrates with her, I’m sure they share

their fears and apprehensions, they make plans.

They rejoice together.

This was kind of the first meeting of the

Christian church when you think about it.

Two people, interrupted in their life by God,

coming together to share their joy and their pain,

to make plans together, and to wait together

for the wonderful things that God has in store

for them and for all the world.

That is what we do together as the church.

God has interrupted us.--

Maybe we haven’t had as giant an interruption as Mary,

like parenting the savior of the world--  

but still we’ve been interrupted.

Maybe we didn’t believe in God, or we were uncommitted.

Maybe we just thought we were going to

live out our lives as lapsed Lutherans or Catholics,

Maybe we just thought we could sit in the pew

occasionally and not get involved.

Maybe we just didn’t care.

But then God interrupted us, or will interrupt us.

Someone came to us give us greetings,

told us we were highly favored,

and told us to not be afraid.

And now our lives are not what they were before.

So we gather together with other highly favored

people who have had the same interruptions in their lives

We celebrate,

and we share our joy and our pain

and make plans about what to do.

And we rejoice with God at the fact that our lives

did not go exactly as we had planned.

And we rejoice in the honor that God has given us.

That God has asked us to be involved in the salvation of the world.

Just like Mary was asked.

We rejoice that God has this wonderful plan of grace, and forgiveness,

and salvation, and love

and that we are a part of it.

And we wait together for the savior of the world

to come into our lives and interrupt us again.

We wait together for the wonderful things

that God has in store

for us and for all the world.

The Whole World Is Waiting

John 1:6-8, 19-28,

Advent 3, December 14, 2014

The incandescent bulb

was invented in the 1800’s

and the first commercial one was made in about 1880

Since that time, most of people can just walk a few feet

over to a wall and flip a switch and their will be light.

And when you go to some places at night now,

like Las Vegas, you wouldn't even know that it was dark out.

So until about a hundred years ago,

before the electric light was invented,

In other words, for most of the history of humanity

People had to burn oil or wax for light.

The fire was unreliable and dangerous

Darkness had much more control over people’s lives.

For most people, things stopped about every 12 hours,

sleepy or not, you couldn't do much work or go out.

Only the unsavory people would come out at night.

Darkness could be dangerous.

And especially in the middle of winter,

when the days were the shortest

The darkness was an oppressive presence in people’s lives.

Of course there was that literal hope for the warmer months

for more sunshine, and for the longer days to come,

But the hope for the light to overcome the darkness

is also a metaphor.

Darkness can mean many things:

sadness, injustice, disaster, illness, oppression,

The feeling that the bad is winning out

death, mourning, regret,

living in fear and dread, with a lack of hope.

All of those things can be darkness.

Our gospel today starts by saying:

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 

⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light,

The true light, which enlightens everyone,

was coming into the world.”

The light is a metaphor too.

In Advent, we are waiting together for that light to come.

We light a candle each week to remember that promise.

- We wait remembering the past, that time that Jesus

came to the world as an infant, and then again as an adult

to start his ministry as John the Baptist was preparing people for.

-We wait looking in the present, as we see slivers of Christ’s light

coming into our darkness today.

- And we wait together in future hope that Jesus will come again

and bring that light to our present day issues.

That day when the metaphorical darkness will be no more.

Waiting for the light is an important Christian theme.

But it’s not just a Christian/Christmas/Advent thing.

The world is waiting for the light too.

And I don’t just mean Christians in different countries.

And I don’t just mean that everyone is really

just waiting for Jesus but doesn't know it.

The desire for the light to come is not just for Christians.

Most religions have their own festivals of light

Advent is one of the many light waiting festivals.

But it’s not just a religious theme either.

People who will never walk into a place of worship.

People who have left the church and won’t come back.

People who don’t believe in any higher power at all and never will.

People for whom God has no relevance in their life.

Waitng for the Light
Ron Freese

They too are waiting for the light to come. 

People all around the world 

are waiting for change,

for things to be better than it is.

For people to not be in fear, or despair.

For oppression and violence to

be overcome by understanding and love.

We may not agree on what the cause of the darkness is,

or what kind of light we’re waiting for.

But the world is waiting for the light to come.

It’s what brings people together into the streets.

Like those people who gathered yesterday

and in the past few weeks in New York and Los Angeles

in Washington DC to protest the killings of

Michael Brown and Eric Garner and others

by police officers.

Or the people who came out into the streets

during the civil rights movement,

or to protest the Vietnam war, or in Eastern Europe in the 80’s

or in Greece, or in Egypt, or Tienanmen Square,

or Hong Kong, or India, or South Africa.

Whether you agree with any of these protests or not,

People come together because they

feel the darkness is too overwhelming to deal with alone

and they are waiting together for the light to come.

  

People leave their homes,

they travel hundreds of miles and

stand outside in the cold with crowds of strangers for hours.

Some would argue that it’s not always the most effective

way to get change in the world, but I think gatherings

like that are more than just a political strategy.

People come together like this to share in their desperation

over the darkness with one another

and to voice their longing for something better.

They come together to feel each others yearning for the light.

The same way that we find ourselves together

in church every week.

A little less intense, a little more sustainable over the long-term.

We too share our desperation about the darkness

and hope together for the light.

John made clear, he was not the light.

And that is what our job as the church of Christ can be.

We can testify to the light - we have the hope, the promise,

the confidence, the faith - that the light will come.

Even when it doesn't look like the darkness will relent.

Even if those people gathering are pushed aside

and forgotten, even if they never get what they want

or if they get what they want and it’s still not the answer.

We can tell all of them: Christians, lapsed Christians,

Jews, Hindus, skeptics, atheists alike:

Do not loose hope.

We know the end of the story.

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, is coming into the world.”

We can be absolutely certain of it.

The darkness will not win.

Until that time comes,

we wait together with the world

for the light to come.

Waiting with John the Baptist

Mark 1:1-8

Advent 2

December 7, 2014

Most of my memories of waiting

have to do with doctors offices or public transportation.

I’m there early to wait for things

that are on slightly different schedules.

When I've been at a doctor’s office or waiting on a bus,

I've usually had something to read.

In earlier days, a magazine or book.

These days something on my phone.

Sometimes I've fallen asleep waiting.

St. John the Baptist
Kehinde Wiley, 2006 

Whatever, it’s usually something that takes me away

from the situation of having to wait.

And you usually do that waiting alone isolation.

Even if someone else is with you, you notice,

You each usually take that time to read or sleep or stare into space.

That kind of waiting is not the kind of waiting that John asks us to.

John the Baptist gathered people together for this waiting,

he baptized them and gave them instructions on how they should wait.

There is no reading or sleeping or staring 

off into space for us in this waiting.

We as the baptized people of God are asked to do more.

John, our waiting guide, lives in the wilderness

and he does not come to us, 

we are asked to come to him.

to be washed in the water, confess our own sins,

and prepare the way of the Lord and make the paths straight.

As a church, we are not supposed to sit back and just wait

until someone else makes those paths straight.

We are supposed to help God to prepare the way.

  

And there are many crooked paths that need to be straightened,

many mountains that are way too high

There are many wildernesses in our world that we could go into.

But the wilderness that is on my heart

and the hearts of many

is the wilderness in our own country today, the one that has grown

in Ferguson, in Staten Island, in Cleveland, in Toledo,

in New Mexico, in Arizona, Los Angeles.

The wilderness where so many black men in our country are being killed

by our own law enforcement for for comparatively small issues.

And the more troubling question 

about why there seem to be no consequences for this, not even trials?

As we wait, we are asked as the baptized people of God,

to go into that wilderness and look around.

To ask the hard questions and to confess our own sins.

Because, as I see it, this is not just the problem of some police officers –

this is our problem.

While we wait for Jesus to come,

we are asked to go into the wilderness of our

dysfunctional race relationships in this country.

To look at it as a whole, not just my personal actions or attitudes

about people who are different from us,

but the whole history of our nation:

From slavery, to Jim crow laws, to legal segregation,

to the high level of incarcerations,

and what this whole picture has done to everyone in this country.

To understand how I as a white person 

have benefited from the disadvantage of others.

To admit that we have a long, long history of systematizing

advantages for some groups

and disadvantages for others based skin color.

And at the very least, if we can’t quite get that far,

we’re asked to have compassion

for the pain and the frustration and fear

our sisters and brothers of color are feeling right now

the feeling that they don’t count as much as white people

The fear that parents are feeling that their child will be the next one.

This work can’t be done alone.

As the baptized people of God,

we do wait in isolation in our cathedrals and churches

simply doing things to pass the time.
We are called to go into the wilderness places together,

to confess our own sins and then work with God

to do the work that needs to be done.

Make those paths straight and the mountains low.

To prepare the way.

Now these paths are really crooked

and some of these mountains we can’t see the top of.
I can’t begin to know what we’re supposed to do with them.

Maybe some of our civil engineers have some ideas.

But I know we’re not just supposed to look the other way

because we can, because we have the privilege of our race

or our status in life to just ignore.

We are asked to go, to look, to ask questions,

to examine ourselves, confess our own sins

and to wait for the savoir to come together.

The one advantage we have as people of God,

is that we know the rest of the story.

We have seen what God can do,

we live in the promise of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

And so we trust that God will have the last word.

We trust that the one that has saved us will return.

We know that light will come,

We know that justice will be done

we know that paths will be straight, that mountains laid low,

we know that what is wrong will be made right again.

And so, as the baptized people of God, we wait for that day together.

Watching For God Together

Mark 13

November 30, 2014

Advent 1

A few years ago, I went camping in Big Bend

in south Texas with a group from my previous congregation.

The stars at night are big and bright....

The sky there is beautiful 

at night because it’s so dark

you can see more stars 

there than I have ever seen.

And one of the nights that we were there,

There were a lot of shooting stars.

Most of the people had gone into their tents

and the few of us who were sleeping outside

started to notice them.

We spent the next couple of hours

lying there, monitoring different parts of the sky a

and saying, "over here, over here, look over there".

Even though I was ready for bed before we saw them,

I was wide awake looking at them.

My eyes were open and I was super alert.

I didn’t want to miss any of them

and I was responsible for looking at my part of the sky.

I didn’t want to let anyone down.

I saw about five or seven shooting stars myself,

but four of us must have seen thirty shooting stars together.

This is the attentiveness that

the season of Advent calls us to.

To wait with one another, to keep each other alert, to be aware.

Not just for the month of December,

but as a practice for all times.

We are asked to be awake with expectation about God

in tune to what we will see and hear and feel.

Not complacent or unaware, but paying attention.

This is why people gather together with other people, 

not only the church, but with family, friends, in schools, clubs, meetings…

We join with others for support, to hold each other up,

for comfort, enjoyment, for companionship,

so we can learn from other people

and also so they can help us see what we can’t see.

 That’s why I think it’s so great to share Christmas with children

because they can see things with new eyes that we can’t with our old.

And these are the same reasons the church gathers together

at Advent and every week. We are waiting for God together.

The gospel for today from Mark

comes after a long couple of passages

where Jesus talks about the suffering

that will happen in the world and to his followers. After that,

God will come, Jesus will come, with power and glory.

The heavens will be shaken, the sun the moon the stars.

And we’re told to keep awake, to be aware,

because we never know when it will happen

It’s strange and scary imagery

and not knowing when makes it seem worse.

Someone asked in one of our bible studies if these

apocalyptic passages were meant to scare people

into behaving a certain way.

It’s a valid question, and these parts in the bible

certainly have frightened people controlled them

and made a lot of people act pretty paranoid.

But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was trying to do.

I think this apocalyptic message is a sign of hope.

The people of Mark’s time had been through the mill,

There was  Jewish uprising in Jerusalem,

and Romans destroyed the indestructible temple,

And many many people died.

Josephus, the historian, claimed that more than a million people died.

Who knows if that number is true, but it's obvious that

the tragedy was immeasurable,

it certainly it seemed like the end of the world.

The suffering for them had already happened.

But Jesus promised that the suffering

would not be the end.

Misery would not have the last word.

Suffering is how you know God’s presence will be there.

So when there is suffering – and there will always be suffering -

keep watching for it, be alert to it.

God will call us together from the four corners

and we will be united as one.

Through out all ages and in all lives

there is suffering.
We’ve certainly had tragedies in our lifetime,

when it seemed like the end has certainly come.

When it seems that injustice has won out.

And Jesus’ promise is for us then:

That is the time we know the most that God is with us.

We need to watch for God’s presence.

Keep awake and alert.

And we do that together,

so we can point these signs out to one another

and when we fall asleep or get cynical or exasperated,

or just plain tired, someone else is there to keep watch and remind us.

Like people watching for shooting stars.

Look, over there, I think I saw God working there.

We can see much more together than we can alone.

As Paul writes,

“By God we have been called into the fellowship of Jesus”

God has created us and called us to be in community.

In families, churches, in neighborhoods,

with people from all places and times.

To wait, to watch, to live together,

To care for one another, to encourage one another,

to eat, to sing, to pray, to rejoice, and share sorrow.

To offer hope to each other.

Today, right now, this Advent,

We have been called to wait for God together.